Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Unified CPN (Maoist) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal met President Dr Ram Baran Yadav at the latter's office Wednesday evening, raising hopes for an end to the current political deadlock soon.

Emerging from the nearly hour long meeting, Dahal told mediapersons that they discussed past disagreements that led to the fall of the Maoist-led government and way to end the current political deadlock.

He said during the meeting President Yadav expressed serious concern over the growing rift among the political parties that has created the current political deadlock.

"The president said that the current deadlock might adversely affect the constitution writing and the peace process," said Chairman Dahal, who is more popular by his nom-de-guerre Prachanda.

"But just by meeting the President the political situation won't improve. This is a good beginning towards ending the [political] deadlock."

The meeting is specially significant as it has taken place at a time when the top three political parties - Unified CPN (Maoist), NC, UML - have been holding several rounds of dialogues in a bid to end the continued House obstruction by the main opposition Unified CPN (Maoists).

The Maoist chairman had reached Shital Niwas, the President's office, at 5:45 pm today to meet President Yadav.

This is the first meeting between the two since Dahal resigned from the post of prime minister following differences with President Yadav, who reversed the Maoist government's decision to sack the then Army chief Rookmangud Katawal.

After stepping down from the government, the Maoists intensified their struggle, as what they call it, both from the streets and the parliament, to protest the president's move.

The former rebel party have continued their obstruction of the House proceedings for over a month now and have also intensified nationwide agitation for what they call civilian supremacy.

They have also been boycotting the public programmes attended by President Yadav, Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, government ministers and other dignitaries, even displaying black flags and pelting stones to disrupt them sometimes

Monday, September 28, 2009

Chhatradhar Mahato, convener of the Maoist-backed 'Police Santrash Birodhi Janasadharaner Committee' (People's Committee against police atrocities') , was arrested in an operation conducted by the West Bengal police at Birkar village near Lalgarh in West Bengal's Paschim Medinipur district on Saturday.

He was arrested by policemen who posed as journalists, according to eye witness accounts. The government, however, was tight-lipped, saying it was awaiting details.

Claiming to represent the tribal people, Mr. Mahato launched on November 2 last a "people's movement" to protest against alleged police atrocities in Lalgarh which followed an IED blast targeting the convoy of Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee at Salboni.

Aware of the regular communication between Mr. Mahato and a section of the local journalists, two plainclothesmen befriended two local reporters posing as journalists and reached Mr. Mahato's hideout.

"Big success"

District Superintendent of Police Manoj Kumar Verma told reporters at Midnapore that Mr. Mahato's arrest was a "big success" for the police. The police were trying to arrest Mr. Mahato for quite some time now. More than 15 cases were pending against him.

The arrest could spark fresh agitations by the tribal people in the Jangalmahal (forested land) with Maoists' backing.

Kishanji, Polit Bureau member of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), told The Hindu: "Unless Chhatradhar Mahato is released unconditionally, the entire Jangalmahal in five States [West Bengal, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Bihar] will be up in flames." Immediately after Mr. Mahato's arrest, a landmine went off near Kantapahari (seven km from Lalgarh) and another failed to explode at Kumarbandh.

Mr. Verma said none was injured. Six persons were arrested in connection with the incidents, four of them suspected Maoists.

The arrest is a major boost to the morale of the State government and the police in their fight against the Maoists and the Maoist-backed PSBJC. Home secretary Ardhendu Sen had said in August that the joint operation launched by the security forces at Lalgarh on June 18 to flush out the rebels was "partially successful."

Mr. Mahato rose to prominence after he organised the agitating tribal people by forming the PSBJC.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Kobad Ghandy, member of the politburo of the CPI (Maoist) was arrested at Bhikaji Kama Place, New Delhi. He had come to Delhi for treatment. Anuradha, his wife and a staunch member of the party died of Cerebral Malaria in April last year. Anuradha was the sister of the famous theatre personality Sunil Shanbag.

Kobad Ghandy studied at the Doon School and St. Xavier's College in Bombay.He later went to London to complete his Chartered Accountancy. From 1975 – 1977 he started a Human Rights Group, Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights in Mumbai. The late seventies and early eighties showed Kobad’s inclination towards communism.

Kobad came from a well off Parsee family of Worli, Mumbai. Sometimes during the eighties he married Anuradha, an academic and an activist who shared the same feelings about the exploitation of India’s landless with him.

They left their comfortable abode, the sprawling house in Worli and immersed themselves in the tribal politics of Nagpur. It is strange that the RSS with its head quarters in Nagpur hardly made any attempt to better the lives of the landless and the tribals of Nagpur.

Kobad was affected deeply by the inequality in India, the great divide between haves and have-nots. He later shifted to Chattisgarh where he and his wife devoted in starting mobile Gramin Schools in the most inaccessible areas of Chattisgarh. He is the intellectual face of a communist movement which remains ununited in the face varying adversities.

Kobad is unlike Charu Mazumdar, Kanu Sanyal or even Vinod Mishra who were embedded to the extent of ordering the party cadres to strike against capitalists. If Kobad is involved in so called ‘revolutionary activity’ he would have stayed ‘underground’. But instead he roamed around the capital freely without any bodyguards.

When asked about Naxalites and their armed struggle, he laughed, ‘there is no armed struggle, only protection of our villages with vintage rifles from the corrupt police force. Some of the political groups in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have arms that even the Indian army don’t have’.

Cases registered against him in Nagpur and Chandrapur are only due to his calling the tribals to resist against landlords and police forces.

Till the poorest of the poor in India whose rice would be snatched even before they eat, who would die of many long hungers, whose disease infested body would crawl out of a hut only once to share the last sun, people like Kobad Ghandy would forever be there.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

In their most recent statements, the de facto president Gloria M. Arroyo and her OPAPP secretary Avelino Razon Jr. have paid lip service to peace negotiations between the Government of the Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) only to proclaim the end of peace negotiations and blame the NDFP for their own malicious action.

Despite the extremely hostile pronouncements of Arroyo and Razon, the NDFP Negotiating Panel continues to seek the resumption of formal talks in the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations and demand respect for and compliance with the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG) and all other bilateral agreements made since 1992.

At the same time, the NDFP is acutely aware of the fact that GRP is hell-bent on seeking the destruction and pacification of the revolutionary movement of the people mainly through the military force of Oplan Bantay Laya and secondarily through psywar pretenses at wishing peace negotiations. The GRP has shown its malevolent scheme in the following ways:

1. It does not want to give up its policy and practice of using false charges of common crimes to demonize, harass, abduct, detain, torture and murder suspected revolutionaries, social activists and the NDFP panelists, consultants, staffers and other JASIG-protected people. It is thus incapable of respecting and complying with the JASIG and the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL).

2. It wants to prevent the negotiation of social, economic and political reforms in accordance with the substantive agenda set forth by The Hague Joint Declaration and the Joint Agreement on the Sequence, Formation and Operationalization of the Reciprocal Working Committees. It does not wish the peace negotiations to be a way of addressing the roots of the armed conflict and laying the basis for a just and lasting peace through basic reforms.

3. It wants to front load the end of hostitilies, which is the fourth and last item in the agenda, so that it can actually destroy the peace negotiations as a way of bringing about basic reforms for the benefit of the people. It is obsessed with imposing the framework of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration simply to pacify the people and perpetuate the rotten ruling system of oppression and exploitation.

By all indications, the Arroyo regime does not want the resumption of formal talks in the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations, unless it realizes immediately its malevolent scheme and attain its malicious objectives against the Filipino people and their struggle for national liberation and democracy.

The Maoists on Friday claimed they have been able to establish control in nearly 5,000 villages in and around West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia in the ongoing battle with the security forces in West Bengal.Speaking exclusively to this newspaper, one of the Maoist leaders wanted most by the security forces, CPI (Maoist) politburo member Kishenji, claimed that the "Maoists have established people control in areas like Lalgarh, Goaltor, Shalboni, Belpahari, Balrampore, Sorega among others".He said they now plan to "levy taxes" on any big companies operating or coming up in these areas. "Generally we levy between eight to 10 per cent taxes on the big companies operating in areas controlled by the Maoist government," Kishenji revealed on the phone.

While rejecting the state government’s terms to come to the negotiating table and giving up their arms, Kishenji said, "Before any talks we also want the release of all Maoist prisoners from jail." The Maoists also want those arrested in the Lalgarh operation freed without delay.Kishenji claimed that in its protracted war against the state, the Maoists have established themselves strongly in at least 50 per cent of the districts in Orissa, 60 per cent of the districts in Chhattisgarh, 25 per cent in Bihar, 10 per cent in Maharashtra and 25 per cent in Andhra Pradesh. He claimed the Maoists still have a considerable presence in north Andhra.Though he admitted that the arrest of the other politburo member, Kobad Gandhy, "is a blow to the outfit", he, however, claimed this "will not hamper our work".Kishenji, also a member of the CPI (Maoist) central committee, is in charge of Assam, Orissa, Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal. He had been instrumental in the resurgence of the Naxalite movement in West Bengal.

In Orissa, he claimed that the Maoists have established total control in Malkangiri, Korapur, Raigara, Ganjam and other adjoining areas. Speaking about the so-called "revolutionary activities" of the outfit, Kishenji claimed the organisation was getting its supply of arms mainly by looting police armouries or snatching them from security personnel. He also admitted the outfit was getting "revolutionary help" from groups like the Manipur People’s Army and Ulfa in the Northeast. In fact, he said. the CPI (Maoist) and Manipur Revolutionary Front have signed a "memorandum of understanding".He claimed that in West Bengal the Maoists were looting arms from CPI(M) activists. Kishenji maintained that in Bengal it’s virtually a war between the "people (read Maoists)" and the CPI(M) cadre. "The People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army have been getting 50 per cent of their arms from the CPI(M) cadre. During the encounters we take away the arms of the slain and fleeing CPI(M) men." He claimed the people of these West Bengal districts have been "providing money and food for the PLGA members fighting for their cause".

He said a major chunk of Rs 5 crores recently looted from a van carrying the amount to a Tata unit in Ranchi was being pumped into Bengal.Kishejni maintained that the Maoists, who are re-establishing themselves in Bengal, have also been in constant touch with the state’s intellectuals and the media. Ridiculing Union home minister P. Chidambaram’s remarks that the government "will flush out the Maoists", the Maoist leader said: "Flush us out and do what? Deport us? We are living very much among the people." He also rejected the Centre’s proposed rehabilitation package. "We need no charity from the government," he said.He refuted the government’s claims that nearly 30 Naxalites were recently killed by a Cobra unit in Chhattisgarh. "It’s a lie.

While three of our comrades were martyred, 15 Cobra jawans, including two assistant commanders, were killed in the encounter with our comrades," he claimed and accused the security forces of shooting tribals in Chhattisgarh and declaring them to be Maoists.

(Circulated to the media persons at a press conference held at Press Club, New Delhi)

The Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners (CRPP) after its Mulaakat with senior Maoist leader Kobad Ghandy in the Tihar jail would want to bring a few important facts, which are of vital significance for his life, before the democratic citizens of this country. Moreover, after the meeting of the lawyer Mr. Rajesh Tyagi on 24 /09/09 with Kobad Ghandy, the details of his arrest and mistreatment have come to light. Some of the important facts are as follows:

Hiding the exact date of arrest

Kobad Ghandy was arrested on the 17/09/09 at the Bhikaji Cama Place around 4 pm by the Intelligence Bureau. About 5-6 people who pulled up in a white sumo car pounced on him at the bus terminal near Bhikaji Cama where he was waiting for about 5-7 minutes. All the claims of the police that he was arrested on the 21/09/09 are patently false. He was kept under illegal detention for four days and interrogated torturing him for three days and three nights.

Kobad Ghandy was under medical treatment

Kobad Ghandy had visited the Sitaram Bhartia Hospital for a kidney problem. He had taken medical advice from the urologist there. Since 12/09/09 he has been going there for various tests till the date of his abduction by the intelligence officials. On 17/09/09 he had received the PSA report which showed the high possibility of prostrate cancer. He was advised to take a tablet for 14 days and return for further PSA tests and a possible biopsy. The time he was abducted by the intelligence agencies and kept under illegal detention he was having Veltam tablet as advised by the doctor.

Deteriorating health conditions

Chest pain and dizziness: Kobad Ghandy, while under illegal detention and then in the court of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) on 21/09/09 had persistently brought to the notice of the officials and the magistrate about his failing health. He was having severe chest pain and almost fainted while on the way to the CMM on 21/09/09. On that day under direction from the CMM who heard him in the court, Mr. Kobad Ghandy was taken to the Bara Hindu Rao Hospital where his BP and ECG were checked and later he was put on oxygen for about an hour. He was then shifted to a ward with 25 gun totting security personnel hovering around. He was having the life saving drug sorbitrate for acute chest pain and dizziness from 20/09/09. After being shifted to the Tihar jail he was not provided with this vital life saving drug.

He has been also taking medicines for high blood pressure for the last 10 years. He is having arthritic trouble (knee pain) and spondylytis.

Severe Diarrhoea /dysentery: He has been undergoing medical attention for years for Irritable Bowel Syndrome. He has been taking Digiplex, Neksium 40. Due to the severity of the problem, he has to have special food and safe/boiled water. Normally prescribed diet as the one provided in hospitals is to be provided to him, which is in practice for the inmates having severe health problems of Tihar prison. But all his pleas for such facilities have fallen on deaf ears in the prison. This is a matter of grave concern.

As has already been mentioned he has been taking Veltam tablets for prostrate cancer.

Callous attitude of the Jail doctor: When he took up the case of his ailing health with the prison officials he was referred to the jail doctor who casually called him to the OPD the following day. Kobad Ghandy had taken up the issue of overcrowding in the cell several times with the prison officials especially the Superintendent. In a cell where only one person can be kept, there were four. But the attitude of the Superintendent was that “why even 6 can stay in the cell”. Due to overcrowding on 23/09/09 night he had complained of severe breathing problems and demanded medical attention. The prison staff came twice but did nothing.

While under medical attention in Bara Hindu Rao Hospital the doctor on his discharge for production before the CMM court referred him to the Cardiac department of GB Pant Hospital or AIIMS.

The CRPP strongly condemn the callous, insensitive treatment being meted out to Kobad Ghandy, a political prisoner whose life is in danger due to his failing health. The jail officials and the authorities cannot play with his life for his political convictions as it is complete violation of law and all norms of guarantee to dignity and life for a political prisoner or for that matter any detainee as has been assured by the Constitution not to say the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights to which India is also a signatory.

Kobad Ghandy is yet to get proper medical attention as he was taken to the GB Pant Hospital on 24/09/09. The GB Pant doctors have called him back again on 30/09/09 for further tests. Kobad Ghandy has asked the GB pant doctor to take his Sitaram Bharati records pertaining to prostrate cancer also.

No FIR furnished till date

Kobad Ghandy has not yet been given the FIR on him. He was not even provided a lawyer. In protest he had refused medicines and food while in the Bara Hindu Rao hospital. Only then the officials relented a bit. But he could only get access to a lawyer after the police made official his arrest on 21/09/09 and produced him before the duty magistrate. Later his judicial custody was confirmed and only then he could get access to a lawyer. And it took the CRPP and the lawyer to tell him about the charges on him! The police has systematically evaded all possibilities of the detainee to take recourse to legal remedies from any possibilities of being falsely implicated.Torture under illegal confinement

Kobad Ghandy, after being abducted by 5-6 intelligence officials, was kept in illegal confinement for 3 days and 3 nights in a house in the outskirts of Delhi and was continuously questioned. They did not allow him to sleep. On 21/09/09 night they tied his hands and legs to a table and asked him to sleep! This is nothing but torture and all those responsible for such inhuman torture should be held responsible. Not allowing a detainee to sleep continuously for hours and days tantamount to physical and mental torture that is universally condemned by all civil and democratic rights bodies and the UN. This is a matter of grave concern particularly because of his failing health. The CRPP feels that these acts are deliberately being done to shorten his life.

Attempts by the police to take him under police remand

In these circumstances all democratic forces and civil rights organisations should raise their voice against the continuing attempts of the police to get him under police remand. They are systematically maintaining that as soon as his health condition improves he will be taken for further questioning. But from the details provided it is amply evident that the health problems of Kobad Ghandy need to be given more attention and ample time for treatment. He should not be handed over to the police.

Attempts to transfer him to other states

There are also reports in the press that the Jharkhand and other State police are preparing to move court to shift him to other states. There is also talk that they are preparing to put him under narco analysis tests. Already several medical experts and international bodies have unequivocally condemned narco-analysis as another form of inhuman torture which damages health of the person under subjection fatally. Given the seriousness of Kobad Ghandy’s failing health we strongly feel that such inhuman torture would only put his life in danger. And all efforts of other states to take him away can only endanger his life as he has still the possibility of getting medical care in Delhi. The efforts to shift him to Jharkhand and other states are to jeopardise any such attempt for proper medical care as well as protection from all forms of torture. CRPP strongly demand that all such efforts should immediately stop and his medical treatment on prostrate cancer should start henceforth.

The CRPP appeals to the media and through the media, to all people with a democratic conscience to join hands to stop these devious designs of the state to silence the life of a political prisoner who has given his flesh and blood for the cause of the poor and the oppressed. We cannot let such people to be silenced forever! The CRPP does neither endorse nor criticise the ideology or line of action Kobad Ghandy stands for. But it strongly feels that Kobad Ghandy does have the right, like all others, to hold and express his political conviction and methods of struggle.

The CRPP demands:

1.Provide immediate medical care to Kobad Ghandy for all his health problems including cardiac and prostrate cancer.

2.Allow him provision for prescribed diet as provided in the hospitals and either safe/boiled water.

3.Stop all attempts to transfer him to other states under false charges which will endanger his life.

4.Allow a team of specialist doctors to take immediate stock and continuous monitoring of his health.

5.Stop all attempts to put him under the illegal narco-analysis which would endanger his life.

Unified CPN (Maoist) chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal expressed his optimism that prevailing political deadlock might end in the near future, following his telephonic conversation with Nepali Congress president Girija Prasad Koirala and CPN (UML) general secretary Ishor Pokhrel.

Talking to media persons in Butwal Friday morning, on his way to Kathmandu from his Rolpa tour, Dahal however put condition that parties must be ready for constitution amendment to culminate the crisis. He also mentioned that a statement from the president on the issue would carve another alternative to the crisis.

Dahal claimed many leaders and cadres of the CPN (UML) are of the opinion that step taken by the president to reinstate army chief sacked by the then Maoist-led government is unconstitutional.

Dahal further said his party is ready to discuss all alternatives from other parties to end the deadlock, and warned of untoward accidents if the continued deadlock affected the peace process and writing constitution.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Unified CPN (Maoist) on Monday hailed the first round of nationwide protest they waged to uphold civilian supremacy as'a great success.

The ongoing Central Committee (CC) meeting of the UCPN (Maoist) being held at its headquarters in Parisdanda, Koteshwore reached to this conclusion after reviewing the past agitation carried out by the party.

During the meeting the Maoist CC members also discussed strategies they need to adopt in future protest programmes waged by the party.

The latest political situation of the country and the numerous round of meetings that have taken place between the political parties to reach a consensus also featured during the CC meeting, the party's spokesperson Krishna Bahadur Mahara said after the meeting.

Mahara further said that his party is committed to find a way out to the current political impasse and that the ruling Nepali Congress (NC) and CPN-UML should also exercise maximum flexibility for the same.

He also said that there will be 'high-level meetings' between the main political parties before the Dashain festivals to end the political deadlock, and warned that if the parties fail to clear away their differences then Maoists will have no option but to continue with their protest programmes.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Maoist affiliated All Nepal Peasants Union has said it will not return the land seized from leaders and cadres of various political parties and the general public during the conflict until another arrangement is made for the farmers dependent on such land, Nagarik daily reported.

Peasants are farming in some 50,000 hectares of land across the country seized during the conflict; we have instructed them to do so, said Chitra Bahadur Shrestha, chairman of the union and a Constituent Assembly member.

They will continue farming in the seized land until another arrangement is made for them, he added.

Unified CPN (Maoist) chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal had pledged before the parliament in December last year, when he was the Prime Minister, his party would return the seized land before April 19.

However, Shrestha does not agree that with that. "When was an agreement made with the government to return the seized land?" he questioned. "We are talking about natural and social principle," Shrestha said. "No one has the right to keep the land barren."

A committee was formed to monitor the commitments expressed by the Maoists. The report submitted by the committee before its term ended on July 22 had concluded land and property belonging to more than 30,000 families was still in control of the Maoists.

Although, Nepali Congress had raised the concern most vehemently when it was in opposition it is mum on the issue when it has gone to the government.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

To most readers in this continent, starved of authentic information by the imperialist news agencies, the name of George Jackson is either unfamiliar or just a name. The powers that be in the United States put forward the official version that George Jackson was a dangerous criminal kept in maximum security in Americas toughest jails and still capable of killing a guard at Soledad Prison. They say that he himself was killed attempting escape this year in August. Official versions given by the United States of everything from the Bay of Pigs in Cuba to the Bay of Tonkin in Vietnam have the common characteristic of standing truth on its head. George Jackson was jailed ostensibly for stealing 70 dollars. He was given a sentence of one year to life because he was black, and he was kept incarcerated for years under the most dehumanizing conditions because he discovered that blackness need not be a badge of servility but rather could be a banner for uncompromising revolutionary struggle. He was murdered because he was doing too much to pass this attitude on to fellow prisoners. George Jackson was political prisoner and a black freedom fighter. He died at the hands of the enemy.

Once it is made known that George Jackson was a black revolutionary in the white mans jails, at least one point is established, since we are familiar with the fact that a significant proportion of African nationalist leaders graduated from colonialist prisons, and right now the jails of South Africa hold captive some of the best of our brothers in that part of the continent. Furthermore, there is some considerable awareness that ever since the days of slavery the U.S.A. is nothing but a vast prison as far as African descendants are concerned. Within this prison, black life is cheap, so it should be no surprise that George Jackson was murdered by the San Quentin prison authorities who are responsible to Americas chief prison warder, Richard Nixon. What remains is to go beyond the generalities and to understand the most significant elements attaching to George Jacksons life and death.

When he was killed in August this year, George Jackson was twenty nine years of age and had spent the last fifteen [correction: 11 years] behind bars—seven of these in special isolation. As he himself put it, he was from the lumpen. He was not part of the regular producer force of workers and peasants. Being cut off from the system of production, lumpen elements in the past rarely understood the society which victimized them and were not to be counted upon to take organized revolutionary steps within capitalist society. Indeed, the very term lumpen proletariat was originally intended to convey the inferiority of this sector as compared with the authentic working class.

Yet George Jackson, like Malcolm X before him, educated himself painfully behind prison bars to the point where his clear vision of historical and contemporary reality and his ability to communicate his perspective frightened the U.S. power structure into physically liquidating him. Jacksons survival for so many years in vicious jails, his self-education, and his publication of Soledad Brother were tremendous personal achievements, and in addition they offer on interesting insight into the revolutionary potential of the black mass in the U.S.A., so many of whom have been reduced to the status of lumpen.

Under capitalism, the worker is exploited through the alienation of part of the product of his labour. For the African peasant, the exploitation is effected through manipulation of the price of the crops which he laboured to produce. Yet, work has always been rated higher than unemployment, for the obvious reason that survival depends upon the ability to obtain work. Thus, early in the history of industrialization, workers coined the slogan the right to work. Masses of black people in the U.S.A. are deprived of this basic right. At best they live in a limbo of uncertainty as casual workers, last to be hired and first to be fired. The line between the unemployed or criminals cannot be dismissed as white lumpen in capitalist Europe were usually dismissed.

The latter were considered as misfits and regular toilers served as the vanguard. The thirty-odd million black people in the U.S.A. are not misfits. They are the most oppressed and the most threatened as far as survival is concerned. The greatness of George Jackson is that he served as a dynamic spokesman for the most wretched among the oppressed, and he was in the vanguard of the most dangerous front of struggle.

Jail is hardly an arena in which one would imagine that guerrilla warfare would take place. Yet, it is on this most disadvantaged of terrains that blacks have displayed the guts to wage a war for dignity and freedom. In Soledad Brother, George Jackson movingly reveals the nature of this struggle as it has evolved over the last few years. Some of the more recent episodes in the struggle at San Quentin prison are worth recording. On February 27th this year, black and brown (Mexican) prisoners announced the formation of a Third World Coalition. This came in the wake of such organizations as a Black Panther Branch at San Quentin and the establishment of SATE (Self-Advancement Through Education). This level of mobilisation of the nonwhite prisoners was resented and feared by white guards and some racist white prisoners. The latter formed themselves into a self-declared Nazi group, and months of violent incidents followed. Needless to say, with white authority on the side of the Nazis, Afro and Mexican brothers had a very hard time. George Jackson is not the only casualty on the side of the blacks. But their unity was maintained, and a majority of white prisoners either refused to support the Nazis or denounced them. So, even within prison walls the first principle to be observed was unity in struggle. Once the most oppressed had taken the initiative, then they could win allies.

The struggle within the jails is having wider and wider repercussions every day. Firstly, it is creating true revolutionary cadres out of more and more lumpen. This is particularly true in the jails of California, but the movement is making its impact felt everywhere from Baltimore to Texas. Brothers inside are writing poetry, essays and letters which strip white capitalist America naked. Like the Soledad Brothers, they have come to learn that sociology books call us antisocial and brand us criminals, when actually the criminals are in the social register. The names of those who rule America are all in the social register.

Secondly, it is solidifying the black community in a remarkable way. Petty bourgeois blacks also feel threatened by the manic police, judges and prison officers. Black intellectuals who used to be completely alienated from any form of struggle except their personal hustle now recognize the need to ally with and take their bearings from the street forces of the black unemployed, ghetto dwellers and prison inmates.

Thirdly, the courage of black prisoners has elicited a response from white America. The small band of white revolutionaries has taken a positive stand. The Weathermen decried Jacksons murder by placing a few bombs in given places and the Communist Party supported the demand by the black prisoners and the Black Panther Party that the murder was to be investigated. On a more general note, white liberal America has been disturbed. The white liberals never like to be told that white capitalist society is too rotten to be reformed. Even the established capitalist press has come out with esposes of prison conditions, and the fascist massacres of black prisoners at Attica prison recently brought Senator Muskie out with a cry of enough.

Fourthly (and for our purposes most significantly) the efforts of black prisoners and blacks in America as a whole have had international repercussions. The framed charges brought against Black Panther leaders and against Angela Davis have been denounced in many parts of the world. Committees of defense and solidarity have been formed in places as far as Havana and Leipzig. OPAAL declared August 18th as the day of international solidarity with Afro-Americans; and significantly most of their propaganda for this purpose ended with a call to Free All Political Prisoners.

For more than a decade now, peoples liberation movements in Vietnam, Cuba, Southern Africa, etc., have held conversations with militants and progressives in the U.S.A. pointing to the duality and respective responsibilities of struggle within the imperialist camp. The revolution in the exploited colonies and neo-colonies has as its objective the expulsion of the imperialists: the revolution in the metropolis is to transform the capitalist relations of production in the countries of their origin. Since the U.S.A. is the overlord of world imperialism, it has been common to portray any progressive movement there as operating within the belly of the beast. Inside an isolation block in Soledad or San Quentin prisons, this was not merely a figurative expression. George Jackson knew well what it meant to seek for heightened socialist and humanist consciousness inside the belly of the white imperialist beast.

International solidarity grows out of struggle in different localities. This is the truth so profoundly and simply expressed by Che Guevara when he called for the creation of one, two, three - many Vietnams. It has long been recognized that the white working class in the U.S.A is historically incapable of participating (as a class) in anti-imperialist struggle. White racism and Americas leading role in world imperialism transformed organized labour in the U.S. into a reactionary force. Conversely, the black struggle is internationally significant because it unmasks the barbarous social relations of capitalism and places the enemy on the defensive on his own home ground. This is amply illustrated in the political process which involved the three Soledad Brothers—George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo and John Clutchette—as well as Angela Davis and a host of other blacks now behind prison bars in the U.S.A.

NOTE: George Jackson also authored Blood In My Eye which was published posthumously, or after this article was written.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Dahal (Prachanda) for constitution amendment to 'rectify' President's moveMaoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who returned from Hong Kong after a five-day trip Thursday, has hinted that his party is not ready to budge on its demand that the President's 'unconstitutional' move be rectified.

nepalnews.com/ANASpeaking to reporters at the Tribhuvan International Airport, Dahal said the issue raised by his party could be addressed through an amendment in the interim constitution to define the role and authority of the President."What we have been demanding is parliamentary debate on the President's move, but we are ready to move a step ahead," he said, adding that the Maoist party was ready to call off its protest movement if the parties agreed to amend the constitution in a way that addresses the Maoist demand.

He said his party would devise new strategy as the month-long protest programmes are going to be going to be over soon.Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal is expected to meet Dahal in a bid to convince him to end the obstruction in the legislation parliament. Leaders of the three parties had met Tuesday and Wednesday, but failed to reach an agreement.

Meanwhile, Dahal has claimed that he did not hold formal discussion with high-ranking Chinese officials during his stay in Hong Kong. "There were just courtesy meetings with some Chinese officials."He further said his party firmly upholds 'one China policy' and that no activities against the northern neighbour should be allowed from Nepali soil.During the trip he was accompanied by his wife Sita, party's foreign department chief Krishna Bahadur Mahara and member of the foreign department Manoj Thapa

Stepping up pressure on the Madhav Kumar Nepal led government, Prachanda last week warned of "a storm of revolt" leading to a "new communist revolution" if the status quoists tried to block the country's political transformation.

The Maoists have blocked the Parliament and organised protest rallies since Prachanda resigned on May 4 after dispute with President Ram Baran Yadav over the reinstated of former army chief General Rukmangad Katawal.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Posted by Member-WPRM (Britain) WPRM (Britain and Ireland) activists recently interviewed the Maoist CC member and in charge of the YCL in Kathmandu. Coming at a time when little positive is known about the role of the YCL in Nepali politics, especially after the PLA has been restrained in cantonments, we tried to find out how the YCL is involved in work amongst the masses and how it is fighting for a new state power. Below is the transcript of the interview.WPRM: Can you introduce yourself please?Com. Sonam: My name is Sonam. I am a politburo member of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and am in-charge of the Young Communist League (YCL).

WPRM: The YCL is often charged with terrorist activities by the Nepali as well as the western media, can you explain to us the activities of the organisation and the role it plays in Nepali politics and society today?

Com. Sonam: When the YCL was founded it was based on four principles: to defend and propagate the party line, to politicise the masses on the basis of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (MLM), to fight for proletarian state power, and lastly to serve the people. This organisation is a political, militant mass organisation. Previously we had an understanding with other political parties which is reflected in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). The YCL is committed to implement this understanding and to make the other side implement this too. This is a politically contentious issue. We are trying to develop a state based on MLM and we want to demolish the current state. Those people with old ideas who want to maintain the status-quo will obviously oppose our organisation. Because we are fighting for the interests of the majority of the people, the majority of the people support us. A minority of the reactionaries who exploit this country oppose us.

We have been an obstruction for reactionary interests. In order to maintain the exploitation and oppression they propagate that the YCL is a terrorist organisation. But we have taken up many important activities. First of all, we are safeguarding our border from east to west. We have an open border with India and there have been encroachments by India recently. Secondly, in the cities we widen streets because, as you have seen, in Kathmandu the roads are very narrow. We also collect rubbish and plant trees. Lastly, we carry out actions against anti-people elements, such as drug dealers, rapists, and corrupt people in business and politics. We also help drug addicts overcome their addictions.

The comprador bourgeoisie and buearacrat capitalists are the main targets of the YCL. The YCL is being defamed in their class interests. We feel we have been lacking in propagating the positive aspects of the YCL. Only the negative aspects from a reactionary angle have been propagated. Therefore there has been some confusion in the international community about the YCL. Now we have taken up a policy that the YCL will work to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity and implement the People’s Federal Democratic Republic, the tactic of our party. The YCL will fight to establish this.

WPRM: How large is the YCL and what is its proportion of women, nationalities and dalits?Com. Sonam: Regular whole-timer activists all over Nepal number 6000. Irregular and part-time activists number one lakh (100,000). Women make up only 25% of the organisation because most women work with the women’s organisation. Our YCL includes members of all nationalities and castes but in areas where there is a large nationality then those people will be more numerous. YCL members must be between the ages of 16-40. Some of our members only work in the YCL but others are members of different organisations such as women’s, national or student organisations.

WPRM: How does the YCL practice the mass line?

Com. Sonam: Basically the YCL has been taking up the mass line as Mao put forward under the slogan ‘grasp revolution, promote production’. This has been one of the guiding lines of our party. Practicing MLM we live among the masses and serve the people. This is our general understanding of the mass line, to be integrated with the masses. The state spends money and wastes it, so it is the YCL carrying out social welfare projects. Therefore the people have a high regard for the YCL. The revolutionary process is the overthrow of one state by another. Because we are also practicing a kind of state, not a full state but a kind of state, it is our duty to carry out these projects. This is a kind of state practice, the practice of an embryonic state, a future state. At this time we are in the simultaneous process of construction and destruction. All these things the YCL is doing are towards construction. At the same time we are going to destroy the old state power. This is the dialectic of construction and destruction. Still, overall, the principal aspect is destruction of the old state power and the secondary aspect is construction of the new state power.

WPRM: Given the unrest in the Terai and the killings of some YCL members there, how is this situation developing?

Com. Sonam: Previously in the Terai the national aspect dominated and the class aspect was not that strong. That’s why there were some activities against the YCL, including the killing of some activists. Nowadays this contradiction is changing. The national aspect is going to be secondary and the class aspect is becoming principle. We are mobilising the YCL in those areas based on the party’s line and our activities are developing in those areas. Organisationally we are the principal force in the Terai. Previously, other parties did not have bad intentions to the masses, but some people who had an interest to cause instability in the Terai were supported by some people. But when we exposed the basis of these foreign-related activists, the people were basically clear and the overall situation is now in our favour.

WPRM: What is the relationship between the YCL and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)?

Com. Sonam: Before the initiation of the People’s War (PW), there was already a YCL, which was transformed into the PLA during the war. During the PW, youth were always organized in the PLA. In local levels there were also local defence teams. After the CPA the main force of the PLA was put in cantonments, but the secondary force, the village and local defence teams, became the YCL. The YCL is now carrying out activities to advance the party line and help the coming insurrection take place. During the PW, the PLA was working as the main force of mobile war. Now the YCL is working to defend the achievements of the PW period and preparing for the coming struggles.

WPRM: Does the YCL also engage in theoretical work?Com. Sonam: Our main work of ideology is the study of Marxism and the analysis of society on the basis of that outlook. We have been working with the masses based on this ideology and the YCL is working to produce revolutionary successors. Its main role is to assist the party, so it is not involved only in practical work. It is a communist organisation based on MLM. We study this as one of our main tasks, because we are a dynamic force to change society.

WPRM: Have you any message for comrades in the International Communist Movement (ICM)?Com. Sonam: The ICM is in crisis now. Maoists are the most forward-looking people in the world. We have been able to develop a theory of the whole world, but we have not been able to develop an axis to change it. Firstly, we have to analyse it, and then take the responsibility to change it. Imperialism has been able to do this, but we haven’t. We have done many things, but we have not been able to create an axis to change the world. US imperialism is making plans in the US about how to change the political situation in Nepal. But we proletarians are not doing enough to expose imperialist intervention. We have become disunited. We must create a new unity, and a new unity of youth. For this we must develop programmes in a decentralised way and carry these out wherever possible. There are two aspects here: one is to learn from each other’s revolutions, all the positive and negative aspects, secondly, we must defend each other’s revolutions. With respect to these two aspects, the ICM has been involved in analysing the line struggles of different parties internally, but not helping each other practically. This is a real lack.

There is a need to organise a new International and an International for youth. Theoretically the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) has played a good role, but practically it has not been able to develop programs and plans to influence the situation. Now there is an urgent need to think about these questions, and if we fail it will be difficult to build support for revolutions around the world. So we are thinking about how we can play a role to organise internationally, and organise youth internationally. One way could be for youth from Nepal to go to other countries, and another could be for youth from other countries to come here and work in practice and struggle in theoretical discussion with the YCL. For this two organisations are needed, one for Maoist youth and one to bring together anti-imperialist youth. If we fail in this, people will analyse for years to come the reasons for the failure of the Nepalese revolution. But if we take this up, Nepal can be a base area for revolution all over the world.

Kathmandu: Nepal Maoists' supreme Prachanda on Saturday warned of "a storm of revolt" leading to a "new communist revolution" if the status quoists tried to block the country's political transformation.

Stepping up pressure on the 22-party coalition, Prachanda said the time was ripe for "new communist revolution". He warned that the protests being carried out by the Maoists could turn into a decisive communist revolution if the "old parties" tried to hold back the country's political transformation.

"CPN-Unified Maoist will create a storm of revolt," he was quoted as saying by the Nepalnews online today. He told his supporters in the capital that the party was forced to launch the protest movement as the "old parties" were status quoists.

Addressing a huge rally in the heart of the capital yesterday, he said the ongoing agitation was just a prelude to "a people's revolt".

The Maoists have stepped up pressure on the government by blocking the Parliament and organising protest rallies since Prachanda resigned on May 4 after dispute with President Ram Baran Yadav over the reinstated of former army chief General Rukmangad Katawal.

Prachanda had blamed the Gen Katawal for trying to resist the integration of former rebels into the military as stipulated under the 2006 peace agreement

The political standoff has put new stresses on Nepal's reconciliation efforts after the end of the decade-long insurgency in 2006, amid fears that the stalled peace process may be derailed if the Maoists agitation is not ended soon.

Violence can escalate if army integration issue not taken seriously: Bhattarai Friday, 11 September 2009 14:23

Unified CPN (Maoist) vice-chairman Baburam Bhattarai has said that his party is ready to show maximum amount of flexibility to find a possible way out from the current political impasse that ails the country.

He said that the ongoing peace process cannot reach a logical conclusion without consensus and cooperation among the political parties, but added that violence can escalate in the country if the integration and rehabilitation of ex-Maoist combatants is not done properly.

Bhattarai, who was speaking at a program organised by Maoist affiliated National Intellectual Organisation in Mahendranagar Thursday evening, also accused the UML led government of not taking the army integration issue - which he said is crucial to the peace process - seriously.

He further accused Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal of not showing any interest toward resuming the House - which remains out of business from the past one month due to Maoist obstruction - by addressing the contentious issue of 'civilian supremacy' vis-à- vis President's move on Army chief case.

The International League of People's Struggle (ILPS) reiterates its condemnation of both the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the subsequent US-instigated so-called "global war on terrorism". The 9-11 attacks killed nearly 3000 civilians. Far worse, the US has engaged in mega-terrorism involving the killing and wounding of millions of civilians, the systematic practice of abductions, torture, extrajudicial killing of suspects and other forms of human rights violations and the destruction of the social infrastructure in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere during the last eight years.

The American electorate repudiated the Republican party ticket in last year's US presidential elections. With varying degrees of awareness, the people held the Bush regime accountable for using 9/11 to unleash wars of aggression, militarism, state repression and war profiteering, all deceitfully cloaked as a "war on terrorism". Indeed, as pointed out in the Nuremberg trials, war of aggression is the biggest kind of terrorism because it kills millions of people.

Ironically, the US wars of aggression and the abrupt rise of US military spending have dismally failed to apprehend the perpetrators of 9/11 in a period far longer than that to defeat the Axis Powers during World War II. In fact, US super-terrorism since 9/11 has bred the further spread of al-Qaeda and similar entities as the Abu Sayyaf and Jemiaah Islamiyah where these were previously smaller or even non-existent, as in Iraq.

The US-instigated "global war on terrorism" is in reality a global war OF terrorism mounted by the world's sole superpower to grab far more concentrated economic and political power for the benefit of the monopolies in the military-industrial complex, high finance, energy, and agribusiness. These imperialist interests have reaped megaprofits since 9/11, to the detriment of the billions of working and middle-class people the world over .

The bogus US war on terrorism under the notion of military Keynesianism has failed to shore up US monopoly capitalism from its worsening financial and economic crisis. On the contrary, it has contributed hugely to the generation of the financial bubble that collapsed in the last year of the Bush regime. The American people have suffered job losses, wage cuts, foreclosed homes, abrupt price hikes of foodstuffs and other basic commodities and services, eviscerated savings and pension funds, deteriorating social services, social dislocation, repression and state brutality. The unemployed youth and colored people are being induced to join the military services and serve as the cannon fodder of US imperialism.

The current administration of Barack Obama has turned deaf and blind to the resounding people's clamor to end the US wars of aggression and undo the grave socio-political ills unleashed by the Bush regime on behalf of the monopolies, especially the finance oligarchy. It has not repudiated its predecessor's bogus war on terrorism but has endorsed and continued it. The Obama government has deliberately failed to prosecute Bush, Cheney and their accomplices for their war crimes, their brazen lies and deceits, war profiteering, and megacorporate crime and corruption that fuelled the worst economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The Obama government tries to deceive the American people and the rest of the world by decking itself out as markedly different from the Bush regime, while in truth it continues the wars of aggression and occupation of foreign territories and escalate war spending and warmongering. It has proceeded with the unabated fortification of the global network of more than 750 US. military bases garrisoning the globe, the most expensive and expansive of which are those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

These hundreds of military bases are worth a staggering US$658 billion and cover a total land area of almost 30 million acres. The US continues to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the prime international military alliance it controls, to areas far beyond Europe, way into the vastnesses of Central and South Asia. The US is wantonly sowing the seeds of war in so so many countries and global regions.

The Obama regime has combined extremely high military spending with the multi-trillion dollar bailouts of the very financial super-monopolies that have generated the history's biggest economic bubbles. These twin imperial killer measures have brought the US and global economy to untold ruin. The millions upon millions of working and middle-class people have been made to bear the burden of ceaseless exploitation and crisis. Current official economic figures point to nearly 10 per cent unemployment rate in the US alone, the highest in 26 years. The reality is far worse.

As the US continues to reel from its worst crisis in almost a century, it is increasingly disposed to foment ever more ruinous wars across the world as a recourse to solving its own unprecedented crisis. In combination with the Israeli Zionists, Obama is glibly combining war threats and diplomacy to pressure Iran. The US continues to generate military tensions and play off India and Pakistan as well as Iraq and Syria against each other in order to expand US interests. It is actively engaged in the subversion of governments assertive of national sovereignty, as it has successfully done recently in Honduras, and continues to do so in Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and elsewhere in Latin America.

In East Asia, the US continues to regard China as a large expansion area for US monopoly capital and as its main partner in the scheme of neoliberal globalization. At the same time, it seeks deliberately to undermine the national independence of China and the rule of the bureaucrat capitalists who still claim to be communists. It persists in blockading the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) economically and militarily, using nuclear blackmail and yet resenting the DPRK's assertion of national sovereignty and right to defend itself against nuclear threats. The US continues to station and beef up its military forces in the Philippines under the pretext of fighting in the “second front” of the so-called global war on terrorism.

The unbroken continuity of the Obama and Bush administrations in the global war of terrorism is a brazen betrayal of the American people and the rest of the world's peoples who have had enough of this deceptive monopoly profit-driven global and "endless" war under Bush. Peoples all over the globe have unmasked and continue to unmask the high deceit and are resisting with ever greater determination the intolerable suffering imposed on them by US. imperialism and its craven allies. They are resolved to build a world of justice, freedom and democracy, all-round progress and international solidarity and peace.

The ILPS calls on its member organizations and allies to denounce the US manipulation of 9/11 for imperialist purposes and to mount timely mass actions to demand an end to the US-instigated global war of terrorism, to oppose every war of aggression unleashed by the US and its allies, to seek justice and indemnification for the victims of the wars of aggression, to demand the prosecution of the war criminals and war profiteers under Bush and Obama and to fight for the pullout of US military forces from other countries and the dismantlement of the worldwide network of US military bases.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

General Chhatra Man Singh Gurung has formally taken up the post of new CoAS, the top most post of Nepal Army, on Wednesday

President Dr Ram Baran Yadav, as the Supreme Commander of Nepal Army,offered Gurung the insignia and administered oath of office and secrecy amidst a special function at Shital Niwas, the President's office today afternoon.

Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, government ministers, top officials, army generals and dignitaries also attended the ceremony.

Gurung is scheduled to assume his duties at the NA headquarters shortly. Gurung is the first person from the ethnic community to take over the mantle of new CoAS in NA's history.

He is also the first Army chief to be appointed by the President. The previous Army chief Rookmangud Katawal had received the insignia from then Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, who was acting as the interim head-of-state.

The government had on August 22 recommended to the President Gurung's name for the post of CoAS due to his seniority.

Gurung had been working as acting CoAS after Katawal went on a customary month long leave before his retirement on Tuesday.

Relations about PPW in Nepal and Italy according to the (new) Italian Communist Party

In the last issue of “ La Voce”, the review of the (new) Italian Communist Party, we read this article and translated it in English, and now we release it, thinking it is interesting for the debate within the International Communist Movement.In solidarity,

CARC Party – International Department

Revolutionary people’s war in Nepal and in ItalyEven the longest march is done by single steps

In Nepal, the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal and democratic revolution, directed by Unified Communist Party of Nepal (maoist), is going on. Strengthened by the successes got in the ten years (1996-2006) of war in the countryside, after the agreement drew up in 2006 with the “Seven Parties” of the old system for striking out the divine right monarchy and having up a Constituent Assembly, the UCPN(m) has firmly taken on hand the leadership of the popular masses in the cities too. The strife is between the democratic movement of the countryside and that of the cities on the one hand and on the other hand the residual feudal forces, the comprador bourgeoisie and the bureaucratic bourgeoisie. What is at stake is the foundation of a new democracy system.

The reaction persistently opposes, but it is not succeeded to prevail over, despite it still has great forces into the old Armed Forces (Royal, renamed National), the Public Administration, the Magistracy and, most of all, it is supported and pushed by the Indian ruling classes and the USA imperialist groups. The UCPN(m) has the People’s Army and the Militia and it has been able to move successfully the revolutionary forces and to continue the Revolutionary People’s War within the new conditions. Thus it has confirmed that:

1. a Communist Party is able to lead the revolution even in a small and surrounded country (25 millions of people and 140 thousand Km² also within actual world context),2. the Maoism is the guiding theory of the second wave of proletarian revolution.The line “firmness of strategy and flexibility in tactics” pursued by the UCPN(m) has aroused the indignation of the Communist Movement’s dogmatics, particularly of the RCP-USA and of its chairman Bob Avakian, that do not understand the nature of the Protracted Revolutionary People’s War. In fact, the UCPN(m) gives great teachings to us Maoist communists who lead the PPW for making Italy a new socialist country. Let’s see some of this teachings.

Within the imperialist countries, the revolutionary people’s war is “the revolution organized and established by the Party, with one campaign after another, combining battles with tactic operations”. The revolutionary people’s war is the Party building the New Power. This is a structure which guides working class and popular masses’ movement. So it joins leading organisms with organized masses which recognize and anyway follow its directives in their behavior in front of the bourgeoisie, the clergy and the other ruling classes.The bourgeoisie takes the initiative in the claiming struggles not yet led by Party and then not yet inserted in the revolutionary people’s war as its own parts: here the bourgeoisie leads the dance. The masses, on the basis of their mentality, the existent relations and their means (spontaneity is this) respond to bourgeoisie’s actions, because of necessity, need, because costs increase and wages decrease, because the bourgeoisie makes more difficult popular masses’ life and increase pressure on the masses. Popular masses’ action is a reaction to bourgeoisie’s actions, a answer that needs only a bourgeois conception and mentality: a conception of a seller who sells dearly his workforce. That is why we tell that economism is a backward, still primitive form, of class struggle. It does not require that the communist conception of the world is at the helm, it does not require the lead of the Communist Party. The spontaneous action of the popular masses is their action carried out on the basis of their world conception, of their vision of the things, of their feelings, opinion, mentality (see Gramsci, Introduction to philosophy in Prison Notebooks).

Until the masses restricted themselves to the claiming struggles, in fact they still are dragged along by the bourgeoisie, no matter how great are violence and heroism of the revolt. The bourgeoises have strategies (of course, into the limits of their class condition, strategies that do not go beyond the horizons of capitalist social relations,: this is a weak point they can not eliminate). The masses and their leadership have no strategy. Marchionne [the FIAT manager, Note of Translator] has a plan and he is trying to carry out it. Epifani [the leader of CGIL, the most important trade union of the regime, Note of the Translator] has not a plan. Least of all Angeletti and Bonanni [the leaders of the two other trade unions of the regime] have it. And these are the conceited adventurers still now leading the popular masses insofar as there is a one direction of the moving of popular masses’ individuals and organisms. Neither the alternative trade unions have a plan. They have claims. They want everything more sincerely, with more determination and with a little more consistency, less available to come to compromises with the bourgeoisie and less resigned to its “omnipotence” than the trade unions of the regime. The best part of them already feels the limit (about it see, for example, the Thesis of Slai Cobas’ VI Congress, Milan on April 16-18, 2009; the report of Contropiano on CUB’s (Base Delegations) congress in Riccione (May 23-24, 2009), the Platform by which Slai Cobas has convened the meeting on June 16, 2009 in Milan). The alternative trade unions shout aims more advanced (no dismissal, no closing of firms), while Epifani, Bonanni, Angeletti and some accomplices are content with no closing of firms, dismissals as less as possible, more social security cushions possible, gradualness and fair division of sacrifices, etc. Today Epifani, Bonanni, Angeletti and their accomplices are shouting this, in order to get the closing of less business possible and for getting “what will be possible to get”.

The popular masses takes the initiative on hand within the class struggle only when their activism is part of a revolutionary plan of action, i. e., aimed to establish a new system of social relations: the Socialism in order to go towards Communism. That is to say, when their movement is directed by the Communist Party (actually, even if not yet formally).

On the contrary, in the revolution led by the strategy of revolutionary people’s war, the Party has the initiative. It moves the masses. Of course, it does it, it has to do it, it is able to do it only considering masses’ material, spiritual, sentimental, etc., conditions (as anyway it does when it organizes a simple strike, a simple demonstration, a protest, whenever it takes the initiative). Certainly it does it, it has to do it, it is able to do it only thanks to a network of organisms and relations (the Communist movement) it has weaved and keeps on weaving, consolidating and strengthening. The Party and the New Power use one campaign for making the opportune conditions for the following one, which pursues higher aims. This is the contrary of the modus operandi of the bourgeois adventurers and careerists as Cofferati, Bertinotti [former unionist leaders become politicians in the highest bourgeois institutions, Note of Translator] and Epifani. For them every campaign comes to an end with the agreement they conclude with the counter-part. Under their leadership everything is quite normal with the end of the campaign; the forces break up and the struggle is out.

On the contrary, the Party and the New Power give continuity to the class struggle. Every campaign makes the conditions for the following, even if between the two campaign there can be a break for consolidating forces.

The Party and the New Power with the operations they promote, bring the class struggle to climax, to a high level of combativity, protest and strife which makes impossible bourgeoisie’s life. So, in order to keep its power, its privileges, its “civilization” the bourgeoisie will do inconsiderate and desperate moves which climax is unleashing the civil war. So we pass to the second stage of the protracted revolutionary people’s war.

Since what is important and decisive is the aim, we, who follow the strategy of the PPW, can and must do things the others who have not our strategy do not do, and if they do them, they are yielding to the bourgeoisie or backwardnesses. In James’ seasons, Rigoni Stern [an Italian writer, Note of the Translator] tells that in his village once the peasantry and the rest of the popular masses severely embarrassed the fascists. The fascist authority had forbidden the covering of the cows by the bulls of tarina race, which usually were used in the region. There were violations about disposition, repression, demonstrations, arrests. Finally peasantry and women demonstrated en masse against the law and the repression shouting “Long live Mussolini and the bulls of tarina race!”. How could carabineers repress a demonstration against the fascist law made praising Mussolini? There were frenetic consultations, until from Rome the order arrived to forget, to release the arrestees, and to suspend the law enforcement about improvement of the bovine race. Rigoni Stern tells a fact: what was the effect of that event on local popular masses’ evolution of politic consciousness and organization? The results were determined by those who, in that area, had a more advanced understanding of the conditions, the forms and the results of the class struggle and on that basis carried it out. According to the way of thinking of Bob Avakian (the chairman of the RCP-USA) there is not doubt: it was a semi-fascist demonstration, a contradiction within Fascism. For those who worked in the ambit of a tactic plan within the revolutionary people’s war against the regime, for mobilizing, organizing and orientating the local popular masses it had been an excellent tactic initiative for extending a crack and strengthening their role: it was to put a foundation for the following step.

The criticism that Avakian, RCP-USA and other dogmatic people (who declare themselves Maoists as well) are doing to the UCPN(m) (see the Five Letters and similar positions), falls within this context. Avakian does not understand what UCPN(m) is making, because he does not understand the essence of the Protracted Revolutionary People’s War. Ever step of the UCPN(m) has some limits: then according to Avakian it is a defaillance. For those who carry out the PPW, every step is a starting point for the following, or an element which takes the significance from the context to which is tied in its work plan. Every time somebody go up a step, Avakian shouts he is giving up the struggle. Is it possible that UCPN(m) will come to a halt at a point and then all that which it has made will begin to putrefy and collapse, given that in a struggle it is impossible to come to a halt whenever one like? Can the way pursued by UCPN(m) lead in fact the Nepali revolution into a blind alley? Both things can happen. Such things already happened in other cases. But only who adopts the strategy of the PPW and is able to make a concrete analysis of the concrete situations, can avoid all that, contributing so that the UCPN(m) elaborates the just line and enforces it by the two lines struggle.

Let’s return to our situation and to what we have to do. It is important that we promote a process, that we make the popular masses carry it out, starting from those who already are moving themselves and that we already are able to move and to orientate, a process of campaigns, struggles and operations, such as to make the bourgeoisie no more able to bear the way we forced it in, the way it undertook for facing the process of campaigns, struggles and operations carried out by popular masses through our work. It will be a process able to suffocate the bourgeoisie itself in the trap where we will have forced it to fall. Then, the bourgeoisie will rouse the civil war, if it will insist to preserve at any cost its system of social relations, to remain to the power and to perpetuate its privileges, as exploiting classes usually do. As regards us, it is important that we drive the bourgeoisie toward this stage of the socialist revolution in the opportune conditions for us, having the initiative on our hand, even if will be the imperialist bourgeoisie to rouse the civil war and we will lead those who will face its sudden attack, its precipitate, desperate and criminal move (we have not to deceive us about a possible pacific passage, however working according to our directions we will be prepared to seize it if it will occur due to unexpectedly and unsuspected causes). We shall choose the right time and the right ground of imperialist bourgeoisie’s move in order to determine the widest ranking of troops and classes possible in our favour and the greatest isolation possible of civil war’s initiators.An example for understanding about what could happen are the events in Nepal in the last weeks. On April 20, 2009, Prachanda government, after the umpteenth infraction by general, has dismissed the gen. Katawal and has appointed the gen. Khadka in its place as chief of the National Armed (former Royal) Forces. Prachanda government had strong cases for dismissing Katawal because of his insubordination since months. In substance, Bob Avakian (RCP-USA) indicated Prachanda as traitor of the revolution because he did not actions as dismissing Katawal. Prachanda dismissed Katawal after he thought he got ready the conditions needed for facing successfully the reactions which the gen. Katawal, the chairman Yadav and the most reactionary forces certainly would have made in order to not lose their main bastion, the National Armed Forces. Has the UCPN(m) well sized up the conditions made and reactionary forces’ effects? We certainly are not able to tell it. But this is the way pursued from UCPN(m) and on this basis it has to be sized. Those who understand what PPW means, size the events in this way. So far the UCPN(m) has proved to think hard its own steps and to predispose good traps for the reaction, to lead well the play which the revolutionary process involves, to be able to make the reactionary forces believe to be able to prepare traps for the maoists and the revolutionary movement so that they fall into those traps themselves. There is no reason for thinking a priori that the UCPN(m) this time has not succeeded about it. This is the thought of the individuals widely corrupt by rooted diffidence in the possibility of the success of revolution (they have neither revolutionary spirit nor courage). The direct and immediate aim which UCPN(m) is carrying out in the ongoing strife, i. e., the supremacy of civil on military power’s, can be hardly refused by parties which do not to openly take the responsibility of restarting civil war and of a coup d’état which results will be uncertain thanks to what happened before.The examples more fitting for explaining what we will become, when at least a part of us will have adopted a such tactic principle which is part of the New Method of Work, are both that of the stonemason who is able to find out the vein of the stones he must work and goes toward his aim, utilizing stone’s vein (this means to consider the circumstances and the conditions), and the pupil who “plays along” school children and “instigates” them against an incapable and hateful teacher until making him unable to carry out his own didactics activity (this means to work with continuity, one campaign after another, making of every struggle a school of communism and putting the results of every struggle as starting basis for the following which has higher aims, by stages and levels).

Many years ago, in the early ‘70s, I followed closely the class struggle within a big metal factory. A working group, even if narrow, was able to mobilizing effectively its colleagues against the bosses, to prevent and to face their moves and manoeuvres so that bosses’ life was impossible. The factory changed leadership many times (at that time the idea to close the factory would have kicked up a complete row), as long as, in a context different from which the working group was fed by (and that it fed) a even sharper leadership, was able to make the working group do mistakes, driving it to isolation and break up. Apart from such end, which belongs to another story, our just work would become so and will become so when we shall have assimilated dialectical materialism at higher level and we shall master it with some skill as method for knowing and transforming the reality. We will utilize a higher world conception, we will lead the asymmetric war, on the ground more favorable to us, upon which the bourgeoisie can not act (as the French or American imperialists fruitlessly tried to learn and to apply Mao’s military theory for leading the counter-revolutionary war).

Instead, until we compare ourselves with the bourgeoisie, the revisionists, the Subjective Forces of Socialist Revolution on the ground of the quantity, following again the mobilizations which in the past were effective but today tire out the workers, we are people who face their own opponents on a ground more favorable to them, where they are stronger, where they have got more experience.

For better understanding this thinking we may develop it as regards the field of the public opinion. In the regime of preventive counter-revolution, the bourgeoisie developed refined systems and procedures (the nr. 1 pillar of the regime, see Manifesto Program website www.nuovopci.it) for influencing, deviating and poisoning the public opinion. The revolutionaries often do not know how making the media (TV, newspapers, radio, film, theatre, concerts, etc.) talk about the experiences, the events and the operations regarding the class struggle in order to form a public opinion concentrated on this field and how making the media favorably present masses’ claims and the struggles the masses carry out for achieving them.

The Red Brigades (BR) and other Fighting Communist Organizations (OCC), when they degenerated in the militarism that drove them to defeat, came to theorize the attempts as means for propagandize themselves. The bourgeoises resorted to blackout as counter-revolutionary move. It was forbidden to talk about attempts. At a certain level of the stirfe, the bourgeois strategists of the struggle against the BR got the consent of media’s owners who made silence around OCC’s activities.

How can we face the task to create a public opinion enlightened and favorable to us?Certainly neither founding ourselves mainly on the bourgeois media, nor mainly on our media, which are incomparably weaker than the bourgeois ones.

Our (still weak) media have to create the public opinion of our entourages, the entourages they are able to reach. Today we yet are well away from being able to give, by our propaganda, a clear and practical consciousness of the reality to those who are listening to us. You just need to see how even our comrades are in trouble when they are facing a new problem or event upon when there is not yet a Party Statement about it.

We have to be able to give to the people we reach by our newspapers, statements, discourses, fliers and other means of propaganda, the sufficient intellectual instruments for talking well and the sufficient, moral and intellectual instruments for acting well. (This is the task of the agitation and propaganda sector). From here on, their words and actions will form the public opinion on a wider range. Lenin told the masses learn mainly by their direct experience. We must lead them to make that direct experience which helps them to better understand the class struggle and to make their direct experience go with the word, the writings, the propaganda, which interprets and does the balance of their direct experience itself.

Obviously, this main course of our action for making a public opinion favorable to us, does not exclude the use of auxiliary, secondary instruments as: to make pirate programs entering the great diffusion media, to profit by electoral campaign, to make operations as we did with the web site “cop hunting” [where the nPCI put the photos of the cops of the political police, so that everybody could be able to recognize them, Note of the Translator], etc. It is important we take ourselves the initiative of these operations and that we rightly size up their effect, range and time, considering the counter-moves of our enemies.

The UCPN(m) is giving important teachings to all the Communists. The world conception leading it is the more important strength factor for the revolution. We Italian Maoist have to learn from its actions, obviously considering that we are working in a imperialist country, in particular in the Papal Republic. The common base of the Marxism-Leninism-Maoism helps us to learn from their experience.Rosa L.

Monday, September 7, 2009

Commanders of the Maoist People's Liberation Army (PLA) have said the government should introduce concrete programme for the disqualified combatants before they could be discharged from the cantonments.

The General Staff meeting of the PLA in Kathmandu Monday decided to ask the government and the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) not resume the stalled discharging process until the government announced a package programme for their rehabilitation.

There are 4802 combatants who were disqualified in the verification conducted by UNMIN.

PLA spokesperson and deputy commander Chandra Prakash Khanal said the General Staff meeting has objected to the comments of the leaders of some political parties that the PLA combatants should not be taken into the national army.

According to Khanal, PLA firmly sticks to definition of "national army", which will be formed after integration between the PLA and NA.

All PLA deputy commanders and heads of seven divisions and 21 brigade commanders are taking part in the General Staff meeting that started few days earlier.

Earlier, Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and other senior leaders had given training to the PLA commander on organisation and ideological matters